Clinton says she takes responsibility for loss to Trump -- but blames plenty

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Clinton blames media, Russia and DNC for election loss

Former Democratic presidential candidate says the server issues was a 'nothing-burger'

Hillary Clinton says she’s not running for president again, but she may be running out of excuses for why she lost the White House to President Trump.

Former FBI Director James Comey, Facebook, The New York Times, Russia, WikiLeaks, misogyny, the pressure of high expectations and the Democratic National Committee have been among the people, organizations and attitudes Clinton has saddled with responsibility in recent days for her stunning November loss.

Clinton, who has said she's writing another book, has often told her interviewers she takes “absolute personal responsibility” for the loss. However, in other questions, she’s spread the blame liberally.

“I take responsibility for every decision I make – but that’s not why I lost.”

— Hillary Clinton

“I take responsibility for every decision I make – but that’s not why I lost,” Clinton said Wednesday at the Recode Code Conference in California.

The former Democratic standard-bearer was perhaps her most forthcoming at Recode, even slamming her party for an inept election operation.

“It was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, non-existent, wrong,” Clinton said. “I had to inject money into it – the DNC – to keep it going.”

But those charges drew a swift rebuke from former DNC director of data science Andrew Therriault, who fired off a series of tweets on Thursday critical of Clinton -- before deleting them.

"DNC data folks: today's accusations are f------ b-------, and I hope you understand the good you did despite that nonsense," Therriault wrote in one message.

Clinton on Wednesday night also took aim at The New York Times – typically viewed as a left-leaning publication – for treating her secret server scandal “like it was Pearl Harbor.”

And the man in charge of that server investigation, Comey, didn’t escape Clinton’s wrath, either – particularly at issue for Clinton was the letter Comey sent to Congress late in the campaign announcing new evidence in the case may have been discovered. Comey ultimately never recommended Clinton be prosecuted.

“I can’t look inside the guy’s mind,” Clinton said. “He dumped that on me on Oct. 28, and I immediately start falling.”

She told a Women for Women International event in early May: “…if the election had been on Oct. 27, I’d be your president.”

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign – there is no such thing – but I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” Clinton said, drawing a link between anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks and its rumored connection to Russian spies who allegedly meddled in the 2016 election.

Misogyny is named as a factor in a May 26 New York Magazine article.

“Once I moved from serving someone – a man, the president – to seeking that job on my own, I was once again vulnerable to the barrage of innuendo and negativity and attacks that come with the territory of a woman who is striving to go further,” Clinton said.

And she again namechecks Comey and the Russians.

“I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,” said Clinton, who did not visit Wisconsin a single time after the Democratic National Convention in July.

Clinton is set to speak later Thursday at BookExpo in New York City. It’s unclear who’ll face the blame there.